Monday, December 21, 2009

Glowing lime green this cassette release is split between two relative new comers (for me at least) to the NYC noise/experimental scene, Grasshopper and Twisty Cat

The Grasshopper side is a live sculpture of quavering tones, slippery synthetics bleeding towards caustic futures... drones that vibrate like the internal ambience of a speeding car with all the windows down, whilst others come across like a ballerina boxed cologne full of beautifully homicidal shadings, wet dream space rituals and grieving requiem. Orchestrated drones that seem to abandon pastoral paths in favour of mainlining an astral vastness, splintering into satisfying machine scream-e-delics.

The flip side immediately grabs you, a sublime ghosting, all mournful foreboding... A wavering horror shot through with shaking larynx, raspy blows and suitably warped melody. Lighter jazz flurries follow, livened up by a drum n cymbal clatter, the sax mulling it over into overblown disarray, a jumbled meltdown... then distraught alto sax/clarinet breaths bloat outward on an oscillating tide of worming distortion...

Abandon ship certainly seem to be channelling some interesting energies...

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Well this took the notion of performing to new conceptual levels...the support BJ Nilsen mysteriously absent, his creation just played though the pa... an assault on the ears ...Stormy weather, full of massive 'jump out of your skin' scary thunder claps and sheet glass rain that descended into central line oblivion... all the while, dry ice filled the place j.ripper stylee, the hiss adding to the unholy dynamics... Would love to see this released in some form or other...

Giving us a live rendition of their latest release Monoliths & Dimensions, Sunn 0))) were all robed up with Stebmo's keyboardist elected to supply the Korg quake and trombone howlers... The ampage around him was so ridiculously over the top, O'malley and Greg had to merely brush their frets to produce a crevasse torn and bleeding earth. The type of noise that made your clothes vibrate round your skin, sick tremors that ripped right through yer.

Completing the picture was Attila Csihar (well it sounded like him) giving out the pitch-black vowel action, the ferocity of which more than matched the power of the mangled fuzz that was being wrought behind him, accompanied by lashings of occultist posturing. Half way through, he switched his robes for a motley, 'statue of liberty' garb, his face caked in shrunken plastic , a matrix of red lasers flowing out of his fingertips...

the beams distorting through a cosseted glass head ... thrown like pox blotches onto his spiky crown. The microphone sucked into the rotten hole of his mouth, as plunging chimes were fed through the blender... everything glowed volcanic... crimson tides darted through the audience...... these boys knew a thing or two about showmanship... As end of year gigs go, this was up there with last year's Damo Suzuki...

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Too many are still swimming round my head... but the one that sticks in my mind would have to be the Persistence is All show Coil put on back in 2000 at the Royal Festering Hall... strait jackets, swinging light bulbs and front row epilepsy ... not to mention the blinding rendition of Blood From The Air

The circuit shrubbery of track two is like tiny Morse mice learning to play xylophones.... an itchy trawl of short-waving snips n echoes bubbling over, producing a nice zen-like emptiness as it all feeds into a meditative bird croup.

There's a whiff of lab coats in the next track, with its TG ‘Weapons training’ dialogue… multi tracked jabber, caked in low key static/glitch. An SPK cum sandwich in a spooky loop airport, the information autocue scootering on underneath the metallic asphyxiation.

Four is processed voice and radio tunings, decorated in a fairground tingle. Scraping, mangled organs popping their gears and venting a hobo crumbled spray... powerful stuff full of indecisive grace.

The pain factor is high on the next track, piercing your lugholes in a scurry of data churn, hatchet spin cycles boiling away as brittle shapes are tattooed in washes of atonal colour... nightmare of fiendish calm and insistent chatter… I imagine implanting 'bonus grabbing' bankers with this, losing myself in the whites of their tortured eyes…

Track six is incredibly subtle, atmospheres that fall like smears of consciousness...palm held mirrors, giving out hypno-globin chills and vacuum packed martini glints, where as seven is a backward drum n bass cobbling, that the brain tries to decipher... a queasi-lingus of radiating outers gathered inward. An artificial dance of inside outs.

The final track is tap dancing starlight and electric toothbrush drone... a menacing bassy vibe coupled with a sinister patter that squints out pure film noir... hinting at new directions for the Dsic sound world...